Fran Bennett
About
Fran Bennett was a Senior Research and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention and is now an Associate Fellow.
Her research focuses on social security policy, gender issues, and poverty and income distribution. She is also an independent consultant, and has written extensively on social policy issues for the UK government, NGOs and others. She is currently one of the UK independent experts on social protection and social inclusion for the European Commission.
Fran is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She is a member of the policy advisory group of the Women's Budget Group (which carries out gender analysis of government Budgets, expenditure and policies).
Before coming into academia, Fran Bennett worked for the Child Poverty Action Group as deputy director and then director, and for Oxfam as policy advisor on UK/EU poverty issues. She maintains links with a number of NGOs, including being an active member of the local group Oxford and District Action on Child Poverty.
Expertise
- Welfare reform, benefits, social security policy (largely UK), especially universal credit
- Women and benefits, women and welfare reform, women and social security policy, gender analysis of social security provision (largely UK)
- Poverty, child poverty, policy/strategy on poverty (largely UK)
- In work poverty / living wage
- Resources within the household
Selected publications
- Couples Navigating Work, Care and Universal Credit, Bath: Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath. Griffiths, Rita, Wood, Marsha, Bennett, Fran and Millar, Jane (2022)
- Gendered Economic Inequalities: A social policy perspective, London: Institute for Fiscal Studies (commentary on gender inequalities report, IFS Deaton Review). Bennett, Fran (2021)
- ESPN Thematic Report on Social Protection and Inclusion Policy Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis: UK, for European Social Policy Network, Brussels: Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, European Commission (2021)
- 'How government sees couples on Universal Credit: a critical gender perspective', Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 29(1): 3-20. Bennett, Fran (2021)
- "Universal credit: assumptions, contradictions and virtual reality", Social Policy and Society 16(2): 169-182.Millar, Jane and Bennett, Fran (2017)
- Universal Credit: Design Matters. The Social Policy Blog. Millar, Jane and Bennett, Fran (2018)
- "The 'living wage', low pay and in work poverty: rethinking the relationships", Critical Social Policy 34(1): 46-65. Bennett, Fran (2014)
- “Poverty through a Gender Lens: Evidence and policy review on gender and poverty”, working paper for Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Bennett, Fran and Daly, Mary (2014)
- "Dimensions of financial autonomy in low/moderate-income couples from a gender perspective and implications for welfare reform", Journal of Social Policy 42(4): 701-719. Bennett, Fran and Sung, Sirin (2013)
Media experience
Fran Bennett has extensive media experience, across television, national and local radio, and print. Some recent examples listed opposite.
Also:
Oral evidence to inquiry into in-work poverty (as member of Women’s Budget Group) to All Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty, reproduced as blog on WBG website (2021).
Participant in ResPublica seminar on Rethinking Social Security (2021)
Blogpost with Marilyn Howard for the Institute for Policy Research (University of Bath), ‘Continuing confusion about Universal Credit and Couples’ (2021)
Speaker in ‘Universal Credit and Couples: policy issues’ webinar (podcast), with response by Neil Couling (then Senior Responsible Owner, Universal Credit, Department for Work and Pensions), 2020
Blogpost on Coronavirus and Universal Credit, initially for IPR, University of Bath and reproduced for DSPI, University of Oxford, (2020)
Recent media work
Languages
English, some French